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I'm working on a "Quick Guide" kind of and hope it does help people out who are struggeling to figure out how the game progresses. It's still very much "work in progress" (just started on that one about 3-4 hours ago I guess)! Anyway, if you see anything that is not very clear, please let me know!

Cheers

Replect

- Last Update 1st of June 2017 12:10 CET

PS.: If you have more advanced questions, you probably find the answer in that FAQ:

Quick Setup

1. Characters (Initial only)

Each player should select one character and take it's materials (model, board, starting equipment), including one estus Flask token, one Heroic Action token, and one Luck token and place them on each character board.

Place one Level Up cube (white) in each square hole for the Base Level of Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Faith.

2a. Treasure Deck

(Initial only)

All common treasure cards.

Each chosen character's five class treasure cards. (Can be equipped by everyone in the party if stat requirements are fullfilled!)

Shuffle them together to form the treasure deck, and place it face down on the Treasure Deck section of the Bonfire tile.

(For 2nd and each following Boss only)

Add each chosen character's five class transposed treasure cards to the treasure deck. (Can be equipped by everyone in the party if stat requirements are fullfilled!)

Shuffle them together to form the expanded treasure deck, and place it face down on the Treasure Deck section of the Bonfire tile.

3. Tile Setup (Initial, for 2nd and each following Boss)

Lay out four of the six encounter tiles around the Bonfire tile in any way you wish, aligning their doorways as you go. (You have total freedom on where the tiles are placed leading off the Bonfire Tile, if you want to just use one doorway, then just use one doorway.)

Place Fog Gate token and place it on an empty portion of a wall on the tile farthest from the Bonfire tile (or a tile tied for farthest from the Bonfire tile).

4. Bonfire Sparks (Initial, for 2nd and each following Boss)

Place the spark dial on the Bonfire tile with the dial displaying the correct number: 6 - [number of Players]

The party rests at the bonfire without spending a spark

5. Boss Selection (Initial, for 2nd and each following Boss)

Choose the boss the players would like to fight: First a mini boss, if defeated, a main boss, if defeated, a mega boss (if you have one).

6. Encounter Cards (Initial, for 2nd and each following Boss)

Take random encounter cards of the difficulty levels matching those found on the boss data card.

Place one encounter card face down on each tile. Place the lower-level encounter cards near and the higher-level encounter cards farther from the Bonfire tile.

Remember

Any equipment/treasure card that is not a weapon/armor upgrade card is considered to be a weapon card (Means, shields, talisman and such are also weapon cards)

A character can hold up to three weapon cards at a time; all of these weapon cards that are not in hand slots go into the backup slot, which is the only slot that can hold more than one weapon card. Two-handed weapon cards go into either the left-hand slot or the right hand slot and require the other slot to be empty (Exception: There are weapon cards which specifically state that you can equip them in a hand together with a two-handed weapon card)

Outside of any encounter, the party can freely move through tiles that already have their encounter cards face up (including the Bonfire tile)

You don't have to rest at the bonfire to use any of the following features on the Bonfire tile: Treasure Deck, Inventory, Soul Cache, Blacksmith Andre, The Firekeeper

Leave encounter cards on their tiles, do not discard or reshuffle any placed encounter cards. Encounters don't change until a boss has been defeated

Quick How-To

Starting an Encounter

Enter a tile with face-down encounter card through one of the doorways adjacent to the bonfire tile or tile with already face-up encounter card (basically one that has been defeated already)

Look at the encounter card and place enemies, terrain, and traps as displayed. If encounter has previously been defeated/lost to already, open treasure chests remain open, traps tokens don't change but placed face-down and barrels are unbroken again

Place character models on the entry nodes beside the door aligned with the tile the party moved from. Remember that a node cannot contain more than three models. (Entry nodes are ONLY all basic nodes - yellow circle- that are adjacent to the doorways)

Choose player who will have Aggro during the enemies first activation

Activate all enemies one after another (From highest to lowest threat, if equal, characters decide)

If the very first encounter in this playthrough, choose player who will activate first, otherwise the first character to activate is the character who would have activated next in turn order when the previous encounter ended (For clarity, give the "First Activation token" to the player who is next in turn order). Then activate that character

Activate all enemies one after another (From highest to lowest threat, if equal, characters decide)

Character to activate is the next clockwise around the table

Repeat 7-8 until party (one character died) or encounter (all enemies died) has been defeated

Remember

The encounter takes place on the single tile (or multiple tiles for main/mega-bosses) they spawn on

Once the party has entered an encounter, it cannot leave the encounter (tile) until either the party or the encounter is defeated

Trap tokens have no effect on enemies and cannot be triggered by them

Terrain (like chests, barrels etc.) has no affect on any attacks range

Then the character may move before attacking or after attacking (but not both; exceptions are specific Heroic actions or weapon attacks which provide their own movement on top). Then their activation ends and any poison, frostbite, or stagger token will be removed from that character. If there is any bleed token, it remains! (If poison is removed, the character suffers 1 damage. If the character has a bleed token, poison will trigger it, the character suffers 2 additional damage and the bleed token will then be removed too)

Can't move onto node with treasure chest or gravestone. Moving onto node with barrel costs 1 additional Stamina until barrel is destroyed. When character moves onto that node, flip the barrel token to the destroyed barrel side

Characters with Frostbite token must spend 1 additional Stamina each time it walks, runs (or dodges)

Attack:

Make up to one attack with each weapon in their hand slots (and backup slot only, if weapon states that it can be used while in backup slot!), targeting an enemy within range of the selected weapon/attack. Spend the Stamina equal to the Stamina cost of that attack

Characters with Stagger token must spend 1 additional Stamina each time they use one of their weapons' actions

Attacks don't cumulate, each one is a seperated attack

If an attack targets all enemies on one node (node icon), the result of the dice roll is compared to and resolved for each enemy individually

Remember

Boss models cannot be pushed by a characters's movement or attack

Node Model Limit of 3. As soon as the character moves onto a node with 3 models on, push one of these 3 models - choosen by the players - immediately of that node, before resolving any following actions (like attacks, movement pushes, etc.)

Enemy Activation

General

All enemies activate (one enemy at a time, not simultaneously!)

Highest threat level first - top left corner - and ending with lowest threat. For enemies with equal threat levels, players choose the order in which these enemies activate

For each enemy follow the behavior icons on their data cards, always from left to right

Player decisions on Enemy movements

Which route the enemy takes is entirely up to the players, as long as the closer to/farther away criteria is met (assuming of course there are nodes that would take the enemy closer to/farther away, if there aren't any... then the enemy won't move). Sheperding enemies that move away into a corner is an entirely valid tactic.

Remember

Boss models cannot be pushed by a non-boss

Node Model Limit of 3. As soon as the enemy moves onto a node with 3 models on, push one of these 3 models - choosen by the players - immediately of that node, before resolving any following actions (like attacks, movement pushes)

Can't move onto node with chest or gravestone. Can't move onto node with barrel until it has been destroyed by a character

An enemy with Frostbite token has the movement value on its Move icon reduced by 1

An enemy with Stagger token has the damage values on its attack icons reduced by 1

End of each enemy activation

Remove any poison, frostbite, or stagger token from that enemy. If there is any bleed token, it remains! (If poison is removed, the enemy suffers 1 damage. If the enemy has a bleed token, poison will trigger it, the enemy suffers 2 additional damage and the bleed token will then be removed too)

Ending an Encounter

The encounter ends as soon as the last enemy has been defeated (means i.e. poison on the activate character wouldn't trigger anymore) or any character is killed

If the party defeats all the enemies and no characters are killed, the party wins:

If the encounter is not a boss encounter, add souls equal to 2 x [number of characters] to the soul cache

If the encounter is a boss encounter, add souls equal to [number of characters] x [sparks remaining] to the soul cache and place that boss’s treasure cards in the inventory

If any closed treasure chest has been part of the encounter, open the chest by flipping the token to the opened treasure chest side and immediately draw two cards from the treasure deck

If any character is killed, the party is defeated:

Place all characters on the Bonfire tile. The party must now rest at the bonfire (If the spark dial is 0 before resting at the bonfire, the game is lost.)

Place all soul tokens from the soul cache on the node where the character was killed. To retrieve these souls, one character must move onto that node. If a character dies before these souls are retrieved, the souls are discarded

Resting at the bonfire results in:

Turn the spark dial down one number (Once the dial reads 0, the characters can no longer rest there, and the next time a character is killed, the game is lost.)

Flip all Estus Flask, Heroic Action and Luck tokens to the filled side

Turn all encounter cards face down

General actions after an encounter has ended:

Remove all black (Stamina) and red (Health) cubes from the characters' endurance bars

If there are any, flip all trap tokens face down, but do not move them off their nodes. Also if there are any, flip all barrel tokens to the barrel side

Do not flip opened treasure chest tokens. Chests are never flipped back to closed (even after the party rests at the bonfire)

Leave encounter card face-up on the tile, do not discard or reshuffle any placed encounter cards. Encounters don't change until a boss has been defeated

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Yeah, I don't have covered anything related to boss encounters specifically just yet. Should hope my game is rather coming later than sooner, otherwise it will take much longer until I get there... If you understand!

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Yeah, I don't have covered anything related to boss encounters specifically just yet. Should hope my game is rather coming later than sooner, otherwise it will take much longer until I get there... If you understand!

Haha, I'd be wishing for the opposite. I can only read the book so many times!

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@Replect the trouble with the Unclear rules thread is that its so big its hard to easily find stuff in there when you need it. I know I saw the Boss movement stuff in there but in the heat of a game I want something easy to find. Hopefully over time people will start doing individual question threads, makes it far easier to search

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@Replect the trouble with the Unclear rules thread is that its so big its hard to easily find stuff in there when you need it. I know I saw the Boss movement stuff in there but in the heat of a game I want something easy to find. Hopefully over time people will start doing individual question threads, makes it far easier to search

Just look at the OP (Opening Post)! I've anything summarized in that one and have just (yesterday) updated it with anything that has been discussed there so far...

I'm thinking about seperating it out in an actual FAQ thread and your comment probably just shows that I should just do that and use the "unclear rules" thread only to get the answers for the FAQ one...

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@Replect an FAQ threat would be helpful, when you do it I'll pin it so it stays at the top of the thread list. I suppose I have got used to the Guild Ball rules queries where the rule is only one question per thread, it gets answered then the thread is locked.

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I would actually have prefered a single post in the FAQ threat for each individual section like SETUP, TILES AND NODES etc. so I could link to each in the OP for less "scrolling". But I'm afraid it won't work out properly, since as soon as people would start posting in there too, it would probably get a mess quickly if someone actually wants to read through them top to bottom.

EDIT: I have created the thread:

And I thought I would just comment several times in that one before someone else does, so I've placeholders I could fill in later, but every time I do, it's merging the post with the OP...